Tag: Collision

Oh No! Lola’s in the shop

A reminder to Watch Your Rear!

When we left Hershey, Pennsylvania in our race to the north I brushed up against a power pole. Yes, I’ve watched the great tutorial from The RVGeeks on watching the rear overhang when turning. It’s a great video showing how easy it is to clip something on your rear quarter when making turns. With our 40′ RV are especially mindful about this.

What Happened?

I was pulling out from a small 2 lane road onto a busy rural highway. The morning traffic was busy in both directions and I was so focused on the traffic that I missed one important point… the power pole that was very close to the corner of the intersection. As I pulled out I misjudged the amount of ‘off-tracking’ of the rear wheels compared to the front. I was almost into oncoming traffic when I cut the wheels to move into my lane. However, when I glanced into my rear view mirror I missed the fact that a power pole was on the corner and as I came around I felt a bump and stopped. I had brushed up against the power pole.

Well, just wonderful. I had driven nearly 4,000 miles from Sacramento to Florida then up to Pennsylvania, and another 2,000 miles before starting our journey in Lola without issue.

After Christine let me know that the power pole was OK, I backed up a tad. The person in the oncoming traffic lane spotted my predicament and stopped. This gives me room to pull out into the oncoming traffic lane and swing past the pole correctly. We pulled into a truck stop down the road and checked out the damage. The rear 2 basement compartment doors have damage, and we had a scratch along the trim of the passenger slider and the awning.

Our plan was to take 2 days to drive from Hershey to the St. Lawrence river in northern New York. However, I was not certain that the slider was OK and didn’t want to take a chance that we would get the slider stuck at our planned stop north of Syracuse. Since we are traveling to our cabin it is a lot more convenient to manage the repair there. So, we decided to push on and drive the 400 miles in one shot.

In Northern New York… now what?

We arrived in Louisville in the early evening and did a closer inspection of the damage. In some respects, it didn’t seem as bad as I initially feared.

Now we needed to figure out how to get Lola repaired… hopefully before the renter arrived to the cabin in early July.

The closest Winnebago authorized repair shop was in Syracuse, but that’s about 3 hours away. That would be a challenge to check in on the progress or if questions came up where we need physically inspect work. There are larger towns on the Canadian side of the border in this area, so I broadened the search to Cornwall and added RV collision repair since RV Repair by itself brought up A/C repair, engine repair etc.

First Steps

We contacted BGM RV Repair in Chesterville, Ontario and talked with the owner Brian. He requested pictures and we detailed what we saw in an email and took more pictures showing the door damage from the front as well as viewed along the side so he could see how much the doors are pushed in and that the brackets are damaged.

We then contacted our insurance company – GEICO – and they scheduled a claims adjuster to visit us the following week. That gave BGM RV Repair a chance to put together an estimate in time for the adjuster to have some more information to work with.

Next is to unpack Lola. The basement area will be open and worked on, and the slider may get some work done, so these will need to be empty at a minimum.

We received the first estimate from BGM RV repair early the next week before Glenn from GEICO arrived. It included the labor costs expected and a listing of parts – but no part prices yet.

Once GEICO reviewed the damage and let us know that having Lola repaired in Canada is okay, we met with Brian in Chesterville before taking Lola there.

They have a nice repair facility set up specifically for RVs. They handle a bit of work from some of the dealers in the greater Ottawa area, and Brian felt that the work will be completed in the time frame we required (if all the stars aligned). So, we drove home discussed weighed taking Lola to Camping World in Syracuse or BGM RV Repair in Chesterville. BGM is closer, is a good facility and meets our schedule. That afternoon we were back in Canada with Lola traveling to BGM RV repair.

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Lola’s in the shop.

Preparing to Repair

Brian immediately ordered the parts required to repair Lola. Since he has dealt with insurance companies, he understood that it would take a while before he saw a check – especially since GEICO didn’t have Canadian offices. That was good, because it took a few weeks for GEICO to assign an International Adjuster to review the case, and for Winnebago to build the replacement doors.

While waiting for the replacement doors, BGM prepped the damaged area. Of course most RV’s today have complicated paint schemes. Lola has 4 different colors in her swirls! This is where the art of blending in the colors comes in.

Delays…

If you have ever had work done on your RV you know that delays are more typical than everything getting done on time as expected. Delays are the norm. When you think about it, RVs are really custom vehicles. Product units are in the hundreds or maybe a few thousand. Cars on the other hand are produced in the hundreds of thousands are parts are plentiful in most cases. For automobiles that are built in the past 10 years or so you can often go down to an auto dismantler and get a used door. Not so for RVs.

Winnebago boasts having the plans and molds for RVs for many years and models. Even with that said, that does not mean the parts are on the shelf! It takes time to schedule the build and get them shipped out. In our case the doors arrived in the nick of time to meet our schedule, but they forgot to include the brackets, hinges and a few other parts. Everything needs to be in place for BGM RV repair to do the paint job.

Our renter arrived and we got a motel room for her and her pooch for a few days, but when it became obvious that the delay was going take longer we have too look at alternative lodging. A few weeks ago our good friends Pat and Martha graciously made us the offer to stay with them if needed.

Current Status – Lola’s in the Shop (Still)

Right now, BGM RV Repair is expecting 3 missing parts possibly today (July 8th) or Monday. Then it will take 3 days to finish the prep and paint the side. We could have Lola as early as next Thursday… then a day of packing and we might be on the way to Maine on Friday! We are lucky to have a cabin to use for the first 6 weeks of this repair process, and friends to take us in after that. Without that we would have had to explore other options such as living in Lola in the repair yard or finding a place to rent.

What else did we do while in Northern New York?

For the most part we had lots of repairs and improvement to do in the cabin. Since it looks out over the St. Lawrence Seaway, we see lots of local and Great Lakes ship traffic. We also installed over 300′ of fencing in the back yard and visited Ottawa. Here’s a summary we put together for our grandkids.

Happy Trails…

Soon to Maine!

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